Little known fact about Michelle Pfeiffer: She was in a cult, once.
The three-time Oscar nominee, who was most recently seen alongside Robert De Niro in Luc Besson’s mob comedy “The Family,” told The Sunday Telegraph’s Stella magazine that she was manipulated by a “very controlling” couple of “kind of personal trainers” during her early days in Hollywood.
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“They worked with weights and put people on diets. Their thing was vegetarianism,” Pfeiffer said. “They were very controlling. I wasn’t living with them but I was there a lot and they were always telling me I needed to come more. I had to pay for all the time I was there, so it was financially very draining.”
The actress said they were pushing her toward practicing Breatharianism, which is a lifestyle based on the belief that absorbing energy from the sun trumps nourishment from food — a diet Pfeiffer said “nobody can adhere to.”
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Pfeiffer didn’t realize she was in a cult until she was introduced to her first husband, Peter Horton, who had been cast in a film about Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. Describing the religious group as a “cult,” she said it was an ex-member — once commonly called a Moonie — that made her realize she too “was in one.”
“We were talking with an ex-Moonie and he was describing the psychological manipulation and I just clicked,” Pfeiffer said.
